Thanks Guys!! Especially to Dave ... I had a typo in the script ... now
it works great!
After some tinkering around I came up with a script to lock the display
SOP of only selected objects. Very handy when a particular object is
cooking a lot and you want to get it's overall motion down. Here it is:
# Lock displayed SOPS of only selected objects
set old_path = `execute("oppwf")`
echo $old_path
opcf /obj
foreach obj (`opselect("/obj")`)
opcf /obj/$obj
foreach sop (`opflag("/obj/$obj","d")`)
opset -l hard $sop
end
end
opcf $old_path
echo Displayed SOPs of Selected Objects Locked
Thought you guys might enjoy it!
--
Robert Persons
Adtech Communications Group
952-944-6347
-------------------------------------
mailto:robert@adtechinc.com

http://personal.inet.fi/koti/tom.eklund/aurora_tiedostot/auroralinks.html...
While auroral sounds is still up for debate, I've heard them myself.
However you need to be way up north. It's a faint hissing and
crackling sound, and a bit confusing
because the sounds don't correspond to any of the visuals due to the
distances.
Peter
"Gravity is not a force, it is a boundary layer."

I'm running H5.0.46 and have found that if a parameter in a shader is
animated that the Shader SOP for that object cooks at every frame. When
one has many objects this can slow down display speed quite a bit. If I
lock the Shader SOP then the shader parameter doesn't update.
Has this been fixed? Is it still happening in H5.5?
Although I don't know the pipeline, it wouldn't seem necessary to cook
the shader SOP every frame since it is just a reference to a shader ...
unless it's taking the shader info and somehow stuffing into the object
memory space in some way. Materials didn't act this way! I would think
there's a fix that SESI could implement, and it would be very, very helpful!
Any suggestions?
Thanks
--
Robert Persons
Adtech Communications Group
952-944-6347
-------------------------------------
mailto:robert@adtechinc.com

I just tested applying an animated shader at the object level and I
don't see any performance penalty (using the performance monitor). When
assigning at the object level the OpenGL updates in a flash as well. So
since it is technically possible to do it quickly on the object level,
why not the SOP level?? I bet this could be fixed if we, as a group,
asked SESI to work on it!
Thanks for your suggestions
--
Robert Persons
Adtech Communications Group
952-944-6347
-------------------------------------
mailto:robert@adtechinc.com

Hi, is there any Hscript command that will allow me to extract subnet
content?
Much Thanks!
Most Sincerely,
P. Alex Lim
----------------------------------
CG Student
Savannah College of Art and Design
----------------------------------
Aieeek. Out of Pop Ice... Again!

Any good ideas on how to do this?
I have some line segments that are connected end to end and they loop
back from the first to the last one. The shape is very concave
(zigzaggy). I want to pick up one of the points and move it around and
have it drag the others around until I pull it away from one that is
nailed down (then at least one side would be straight, maybe both, or
one would be slack). The other constraints I need is to not have any of
the segments cross each other and no stretching/shrinking/springing.
I don't need any fancy folding or deforming at the joints like skin on
elbows or anything, just regular ball joints.
Thanks,
Dave

Hi,
Anyone know, in a Vex SOP context, if there's a computenormal() function?
Interestingly enough, if you have:
N = normalize(N);
even if you didn't have N to begin with, you get what seems like a
normalize(calculatenormal(P))
So, how do I get it intentionally? All I'm trying to do is present a
"compute normals" button to the user in a custom Vex SOP.
Thanks,
-- Antoine
_______________________________________________________________________
Antoine Durr Rhythm & Hues
Visual Effects 5404 Jandy Pl.
antoine(a)rhythm.com Los Angeles, CA 90066
voice: 310/448-7669 pager: 310/232-2961 fax: 310/448-7600
_______________________________________________________________________

Hi,
Any recommendations for creating a "Northern Lights"
electromagnetic-plasma-photon excitation kind of effect? I've played
around with using a particles system and trying to mimic "waves of
charges" flowing through the particle system. But find it prohibitive
when I need to increase particle counts into the millions to create
enough subtle detail. The camera needs to fly through the volume as
well ...
Thanks!
--Mark
--
__________________________
Mark Story
Digital Cinema Arts
P.O. Box 23638
Flagstaff, Arizona
86002
http://www.markstory.com/http://www.digitalcinemaarts.com/
mstory(a)xion.org

On 16 Aug 2002, Mario Marengo wrote:
>
> Thing is; there are only two kinds of "types" in VEX: the globals (which
> are true types - and *not* generated from vex), and attributes (which
> are arrays of real types). And the only things that vex can create are
> attributes.
Huh? I'm not sure I'm following that (having a senior moment).
>
> The only way would be to hijack an existing global with write access -
> like N.
Right. Nasty though ... not good practice.
> It seems that all VEX types (vectors and matrices) are really packed
> floats of fixed length with a bunch'o overloaded operators that
> interpret them as compound types; but which revert back to arrays
> (attributes) once exported... just guessing...
I think you're right, from what I remember purusing the HDK header files.
> Actually; now that I think about it, there's no way that vex could be
> allowed into the actual geo-detail outside of the attribute list. So,
> even though it can be passed some tidbits (like N) and maybe allowed
> write access to them; it couldn't (shouldn't!) be allowed to arbitrarily
> alter the detail's data structure, as everything else would just fall
> apart.
Now that I must disagree with ... if you write bad code, it performs
badly, but to take away capabilities isn't a good answer to prevent users
from getting into trouble. That's yet another reason an application needs
to have a robust error/exception handler ... tell me the last time you
received an informative verbose error message from Houdini/Mantra ... and
/tmp/crashlog(s) don't count! ;-)
> There is one solution of course... can you say "HDK"? ;)
HDK for Free!!!
--Mark
>
> --
> ......................................................................
> Mario Marengo mailto:mario@axyzfx.com
> AXYZ ANIMATION http://www.axyzfx.com
>
> Theorem: A cat has nine tails.
> Proof: No cat has eight tails. A cat has one tail more than no cat.
> Therefore, a cat has nine tails.
> ......................................................................
>